3dBloke249xp

I've tinkered with various Linux distros over the last 15+ years (in dual-boot and VirtualBox), but never stuck with it as my main OS for personal use... until now, that is.

As of mid-2014 I have Mint 17 Xfce as the OS for my laptop. I transferred my Windows 7 lic to a new laptop bought for my son (he needs Windows for his gaming and studies). My own laptop is from 2006 (dual core Centrino) and Mint Xfce runs fine, with no performance issues and good usability.

My move to Linux is helped by the fact that I've been reducing my reliance on Windows software. An important recent step has been the migration of my personal accounts data from Quicken (UK 2005) to GnuCash... quite an effort to migrate the data, but well worth it.

I'm a long-time user of GIMP and Inkscape. Scrivener, also, is high on my list of "must have" apps.

Finally, a significant motivation for my move to Linux has been the Ed Snowden revelations. The man's a hero. Deserves a Nobel Prize or something.

geany"Very nice. I wouldn't call it an IDE, though. It's a sophisticated and versatile editor. Not everyone wants an IDE as such things can be bloated and overly complex. Geany is neither of these things, thankfully :) For added enjoyment, get the Base16 colour schemes at https://github.com/robloach/base16-geany"

lua5.2"It's hard to praise Lua enough. A beautiful, elegant language on a par with Smalltalk."

klavaro"Excellent software. Well written and easy to use. I've been meaning to learn to touch-type for many years. Klavaro may be what finally gets me there :)"

handbrake"Perfect for ripping DVDs to MKV files. Very easy to set up."

vym"This is all that's needed to organise my chaotic thoughts. Great stuff!"

git"By far the most flexible and easiest to use SCM out there. Useful not just for software devs, but file and document versioning in general."

openjdk-7-jdk"Oracle's JDK is built on top of OpenJDK, but OpenJDK does all I need (for Eclipse and Android) so it's a no-brainer to go with open source."

libaspell-dev"Installed this package to resolve the absence of a spell checker in Scrivener 1.6.1.1 beta. No other action required. Did the trick :)"

aspell"Works. @ Penumbra, according to SourceForge, Aspell is very much still in development. At the time I write this the latest release was 2013-04-30, although aspell.net is out of date in this respect.. "

cryptkeeper"Works great with Linux Mint 14 and LMDE. The only thing required to get it working is to "sudo addgroup your_username fuse". Allows access to my Dropbox files originally encrypted in Windows using BoxCryptor. Easy and convenient to use. Must-have for anyone concerned about cloud data security."

gnucash"For anyone stuck on Windows with unsupported Quicken, as I was until quite recently, GnuCash is the answer to your problems. I began with the Windows version, migrating my Quicken data with a little tweaking, and now am free to move to Linux full-time. Thanks for a great piece of software. It's free, but anyone who finds it valuable really ought to donate at least once."

guvcview"At last, I have found something that actually allows reliable webcam video capture and has a range of meaningful settings. Works well with my Logitech Pro 9000 webcam. There is a little delay / slow frame rate, but acceptable."

inkscape"In its own understated way, Inkscape is an excellent and very powerful tool."

shutter"Should be standard in most Linux builds. So much better than Gimp Screenshot. As with any similar tool (I also use SnagIt on Windows) it's great to save screen captures to Dropbox, for access from multiple systems, e.g. when documenting."